


The Adventures of Steve and Art

by kayliemalinza



Series: The Brooklyn Buchanans [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-07-29 00:24:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7662976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Originally <a href="http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/85013673581/what-if-buckys-favorite-game-was-how-many-rude">posted on Tumblr</a>.</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/85013673581/what-if-buckys-favorite-game-was-how-many-rude).

what if bucky’s favorite game was “how many rude things can i say to steve before he punches me”

steve seems pretty invested in knowing how to handle himself in a fight and what kind of friend would bucky be if he didn’t give steve every opportunity to practice?

i mean obviously bucky’ll stop if steve starts having an asthma attack but besides that i don’t think he was all that gentle–especially before he hit his growth spurt and steve didn’t

(another option is that steve went all Earnest Fisticuffs and bucky’s like no c'mon it’s not that big a deal no i don’t want to fight you, but steve kept _insisting_ , and so bucky halfheartedly took a swing and steve, bless his heart, countered it with intense concentration)

(probably a mix of both, and there’s always those days when bucky wants to fight and steve’s just like leave me the hell alone i am practicing my drawing)

(speaking of drawing how many times do you think bucky had to sit model. how many of those sketches do you think steve still has access to

how many of those are in the smithsonian, maybe not on display but in a drawer somewhere, and when cap got defrosted someone said–you know, legally i think we’re obligated to give these back)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/85274964616/what-if-bucky-asks-steve-to-draw-a-self-portrait).

what if bucky asks steve to draw a self-portrait and steve does, and bucky takes it to war with him. he keeps it folded up neatly in his uniform pocket at all times, even when he’s taken prisoner (the paper crinkles when they tighten the strap over his thighs) and even when he’s rescued.  
  
the drawing is even more precious then: that serious skinny face, pointed chin, the way steve drew his nose more crooked than it really was, and his mouth too straight because steve never sees himself smiling the way that bucky does.  
  
bucky asks for another self-portrait–in the costume hood, with the little wings–because that’s what he regrets the most about getting captured (being on that the table, bright lights flashing on the needle’s point, the smell of blood and bleach), you know–he missed the show.  
  
steve gets pissy about it but bucky says, “you never know when i’m going to need a good laugh on the battlefield” and that’s that. bucky gets a new drawing.  
  
this one is drawn on quarter-sized card stock, small and stiff enough to stack on the old one and protect it from crumpling even more. bucky sews a new pocket in his jacket just to keep them in, safe against his ribcage, with a clever slit opening so that nothing can shake them loose, not even falling from a train.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/86318546361/ive-been-wondering-what-steve-did-for-a-living).

i’ve been wondering what steve did for a living before he enlisted. i’m wondering if the art was a strategic move as well as a personal one–

[phrenotobe](http://phrenotobe.tumblr.com) told me a story (and feel free to correct me on the details, max) about a mining town where just about every single job, especially for the men, was linked to the mine. but there was one little boy who was sickly, had respiratory problems, and so would never be able to work in the coal mine–and so his parents sat him down at the piano and made him practice for hours a day his entire childhood, so that when he grew up he would be able to play the soundtrack accompaniment at the movie theater (this was in the age of silent movies) and thus have gainful employment.

maybe mrs rogers didn’t have access to a piano, or steve gave it a try and just didn’t have the ear for it (literally–did i read somewhere that he was partially deaf?) so he went into art instead (of course, i also read that he was partially colorblind pre-serum, which may be why in MCU we only see him working with graphite pencil.)

draftsmen were more valuable prior to cheap, full-color printing, so steve could make a living painting posters, advertisements, shop windows, etc.  there’s a photo somewhere on tumblr of a room full of women at desks painting identical propaganda posters for WWII. that’d be a really nice background to his transformation into Captain America, and give him a slightly different relationship with the show posters and trading cards, yeah?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr.](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/101075963371/overhearing-some-of-the-shoptalk-between-mrs)

overhearing some of [the shoptalk between mrs. barnes and her illustrator mr. goldstein](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7665607/chapters/17456680) inspires steve to strike up a collaboration with bucky’s sickly cousin emmer grace. she wrote the text, he did the illustrations–some half dozen picture books traveling chapter by chapter between brooklyn and toe river, north carolina.  
  
bucky’ll remind steve of this decades later, when they’re hunched with their backs to some enemy mountain and steve is sketching out a little cartoon to send home to emmer’s baby girl, sarah shade.  
  
“c'mon, steve, you did the drawing,” bucky says, rifle propped against his knees and collar popped up against the wind. “just let me fill in the caption. the baby’ll love it.”  
  
and steve agrees, albeit with great hesitation. he is, ashamedly, jealous of how much the baby seems to favor her cousin bucky, because bucky gives her extra cookies and forgets bedtime entirely and teaches her raucous songs and is, honestly, completely unsuitable as a caretaker; whereas steve, who has nothing but her best interests in mind, who is as attentive and dutiful as her own parents–steve is continually snubbed  
  
but that’s alright. steve doesn’t need sticky kisses as long as he has the strength of his convictions.  
  
(steve would appreciate the kisses, though.)  
  
but what steve mistakes for a twinge of petty jealousy is actually reasonable suspicion and he should’ve listened to his instincts and refused to hand the cartoon over to bucky  
  
bc bucky, as it turns out, is particularly gifted in the micro-form (just as his mother was, in her day, gifted.) in space of three speech bubbles and a single below-panel caption he manages to express so much gallows humor and survivor’s guilt that steve has to double-envelope the cartoon and tell mr and mrs shade that maybe you should wait until sarah’s a little older before you let her read this. at least ten years, i’d say.  
  
steve’s startlingly prescient. [one hot night in 1955](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till), sarah shade will pick through the old papers in her aunt julia’s study, flaking blood from her split knuckles and tender scalp, her eyes burning and her legs still scraped up from the sidewalk. her palms will be splintered from the placard handle and her wrists still bruised from the cuffs. she’ll have bombs on the brain. gas and bullets. young, flinty boys picked off from a different kind of trench.  
  
she’ll pull out that little cartoon, yellow at the creases, paper fraying, ink gone ripply with discolor, and she’ll think–goddamn, cousin bucky. you’re telling _me_.  
  
finally, those comics see the light of day. not in any scrubbed-clean exhibit like the smithsonian had, or the clumsy shrines that every new conservative group feels compelled to erect.  
  
no, sarah shade puts together an anthology of the grungy bits the flagwavers don’t like to see: dirty cartoons and [lighters etched with swears](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/105886061436/odditiesoflife-personalized-vietnam-zippo); letters from the front riddled with holes from angry pen-nibs; interviews of vets who were pissed on and shaken and left to rot in alleys, in bread lines, in bad hospital beds. the soldiers who were a little too dark for the american dream. a little too damaged. a little too angry.  
  
sarah shade puts bucky’s cartoon right above a photo of her at the messy end of a protest march: she’s sitting in the gutter, lip busted and trumpet dangling dented from her fingers. there’s a replica cap shield propped up against her knees, black paint smeared across it:  
  
**CAPTAIN AMERICA DIDN’T DIE FOR THIS**  
  
suffice to say, there is a certain subset of cap aficionados who hate her fucking guts.  
  
(where do you stand on that, coulson  
  
if you stand at all)


End file.
